The MiG-23 has large caliber countermeasures, it seems the flares completely obstructed the fov of the missile due to how he maneuvered. This would likely have even stopped an R-73 (at least momentarily). It’s true the AIM-9L should not be decoyed when tracking a reheat plume, but there is also historical precedence for the missile being decoyed by different types of flares.
It’s not dependent on the caliber of the flare in question (it is slightly impacted by the size but only as it applies to the actual burn rate and sustain time of the flare in question) but the chemical composition of the pyrotechnic compound(s) and how that interacts with the response of the detector in the missile’s seeker.
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@_David_Bowie @Fireball_2020 I had doubts about AIM-9P-4, AIM-9P-5 & AIM-9S maneuvering capability Sea Level at ?
Uhhh, that sentence is phrased quite badly.
The SAM SPAA’s name is M48 Chaparral, the missile’s name is MIM-72. Just like how the name of the US toptier SPAA is XM1069/ADATS and the missile’s name is MIM-146.
It is important to note that the MIM-72A itself (the first MIM-72 variant) is not completly equal to the AIM-9D, as it has additional electronics and wires that optimize it for SAM use, hence the reduced maneuverability to just 16.5G as you said.
However, the MIM-72 had many variants which vastily improved upon each other in many areas. The definitive variant of the MIM-72 is the MIM-72G, which includes a new AN/DAW-2 seeker using the FIM-92’s Passive-Optical-Seeker-Technique (POST) technology (not the actual Stinger seeker, just uses the same IRCCM/ECCM technology), bigger 12.6kg M250 blast-fragmentation warhead, M121 smokeless motor, and many other smaller upgrades. The MIM-72G has a range of 9km. Thanks to that, we can assume the MIM-72G is capable of pulling as much G as the original AIM-9D, or more likely, far more than that.
edit: according to this archive I found, the M250 warhead has 6.6lb (~3kg) of Octol explosives. Ingame, Octol has a TNT modifier of 1.59x.
3 * 1.59 = 4.77
The M250 warhead has an explosive weight of 4.77kg TNT equivelant. Ain’t no Su-25s shaking off any hits from that thing.
Archive: MIM-72 Missile Information : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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Anyone have some more charts for the range of the AIM-9L? The ones in the SMC sheet are a little… not so obvious and easily tested.
Anyone know what the AIM-9I and AIM-9R’s were or their alternate designations?
CINCPAC 1978
I think it’s the alternate name of the AIM-9P. It was called AIM-9J-IR
IIRC the 9R had some kind of electro-optical/TV seeker, but was cancelled
I’ve seen it but I thought it’s a late 80s program?
yep, first live fire was 1990 before it was cancelled. It had a WGU-19/B IIR seeker, which my understanding is it was more like the AGM-65D’s seeker
The one referenced is probably an alternate name of another missile then.
I’m thinking it might be AIM-9P3 or 4 since they also recommended it to Taiwan instead of the 9L.
Awesome, I’ll do some testing this week when I start my missile testing series.
There’s a huge performance jump from the R60s to the R73s. I was wondering, what’s the performance difference between the 9Ls and the 9Ms? Would it be noticeable?
AIM-9M has slightly worse performance because the reduced smoke propellant has reduced ISP as well. G overload increases from 32 to 35G.
So, basically the planes using Aim-9s are screwed until the 9X is introduced? Lovely. Time to keep distances XD
Pretty much unless they add the AIM-95, which is what the R-73 was designed to compete with.
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Wouldn’t the AIM-95 only be a solution for the F-14? That wouldn’t solve the issues for F-16s and F-15s
This would be accurate yes, this is fine, because nato would have better radar missiles(ER would be featured)
The F-15 also participated in the AIM/ACEVAL tests so it is likely that it carried the AIM-82 / -95 surrogates so could effectively be handwaved in a sense or the AIM-82 modeled though very little was developed before cancelation.
and the F-16 was investigated for fitting various HMS configurations and one of the requirements was that it was AIM-95 certified, so again could be leveraged as there is evidence that it was looked at, the same way the Yak-141 has IRST and various other features.
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